IN THE WHITE CITY: Remembering Bruno Ganz
The common access points to Bruno Ganz for many Anglo-American commentators seem to be his iconic performances in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987) and Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall (2014). While those are entirely legitimate references, Ganz deserves a far more considered appraisal as one of European cinema’s most prolific film actors and versatile performers of the last 40 years.
There was more to his repertoire than the endlessly replayed Hitler bunker rant of Downfall or the authoritarian cameos he invariably started to pick up in English-speaking cinema following that performance.
Perhaps the film that best details the specific intensity and ambiguous presence Ganz brought to the big screen is Alain Tanner’s In the White City (1983) — a work that, incidentally, sorely deserves a retrospective. The film’s premise is simple enough: Ganz’s itinerant naval worker, Paul, pitches up in Lisbon, wanders off into the city to idle about and booze for a few days, and then impulsively decides not to return to his ship, but to luxuriate in this role of stranger in an intoxicating city for a little while longer.
